Malevolent and without form
by Second Star On The Left
Summary: A King's bastard is a dangerous thing - Elia is a Martell with enough Targaryen blood to know that for an absolute truth.


**i.**

"Fawn over your bastard all you wish, my lord," Elia says to him, when finally he returns to court, when finally he deems to leave aside his mistress for his wife. "But I will not suffer the child being raised with Rhaenys and Aegon."

"Come now, Elia," Rhaegar says, beatific in his surety - he is to ride into battle on the morrow, fighting to defend his father's throne, which stands in danger as much because of his actions as Aerys' madness. "She will be their sister-"

"She will be a bastard," Elia insists. "And I will not suffer another Daemon Blackfyre, _husband."_

 **ii.**

The Mountain looms impossibly large over them - Rhaenys is gone, in a flurry of curls as black as Elia's own above eyes as lavender and terrified as gentle Queen Rhaella's, and Elia is thankful for it.

Rhaegar has lost, then. So be it. _At least the world will not end,_ Elia thinks bitterly, laying Aegon on the bed behind her and setting herself between him and the monster Rhaegar anointed a man.

Rhaegar anointed and decreed and decided without a care for those poor souls left in his wake. Elia has spent their whole marriage attempting to smooth ruffled egos and bruised hearts, but she could always forgive him that, seeing something of Doran's reserve and Oberyn's disregard in him.

Now, though? Now, she cannot imagine how she ever saw her brothers in her white-bellied fool of a husband. Who gambles their world on a misinterpreted scrap of prophecy?

"My brothers will see you dead if you lay a finger on me," she spits at him, and he is reaching a massive hand out for her throat when a shining golden sword sinks into the joint at his elbow, darts back, drives deep into his bare neck.

The Mountain falls, and brings Ser Jaime halfway with him - but Ser Jaime rises again, a sun in splendour in that gilded armour of his, and slams through into Rhaegar's bedchamber to fell Lorch, who falls less like a mountain and more like a sin.

 **iii.**

Rhaenys suffers terrible nightmares, and insists on hiding her silvered scars under scarves of scarlet silk and gold gossamer and black velvet. She is so brave, asking for her beloved papa only twice after Rhaegar's cremation on Dragonstone.

Rhaella perhaps hears more requests for stories of Rhaegar - Elia has so few to share with her daughter that she is glad of it.

Aegon, a babe, has no memory. Aegon, a king, will speak of this most terrible of events over and over, all across his reign. Elia, his regent, will ensure that none forget just how dangerous even their allies are, in this uncertain world in which they find themselves trapped.

Elia is only thankful that they live - she has her brothers behind her, Arthur returned to her in shame and Ashara returned in grief, the Reach sworn reluctantly to Aegon through victory and the promise of a crown of gold for Fat Mace's newborn daughter, and the Lannisters…

Well, the Lannisters. Who ever knows just where the Lannisters have truly sworn their swords, save to the almighty Rock? She takes Genna Frey as a lady-in-waiting regardless.

 **iv.**

Rhaegar's bastard was a boy, not the assured girl, and his child-mother barely survived bringing him into the world.

"Marry her to someone safe," Oberyn says, sharp and unkind, as though he is not set to wed a rebel's daughter, rebel's widow, with a bastard daughter at her heels. He of all should be sympathetic to the lady wolf, surely?

It has been near four years since Elia saw her husband lose his mind and let his cock lead him to the girl, and still it stings. Perhaps sympathy is not something left in her heart any longer, cut away by the scars on Rhaenys' arms and the eye the Mountain crushed from Ser Jaime's pretty face.

The bastard remains at Winterfell, under strictest guardianship, when his mother comes south, given in marriage to Rhaegar's pet Hand, ever-mourning Jon Connington who wears more black than the Night's Watch.

Elia feels unkind, but it is best. If the boy is far away and forgotten, he is no threat to Aegon. She will suffer no threats to either of her children. Never again.

 **v.**

There are memorials - songs and stories, statues and ciphers. Elia ignores them publicly, but she gathers them in secret, delivered to her hand by Oberyn's little snakes, who feast so gleefully on Varys' little birds.

A statue of Robert Baratheon - well, of a crowned stag with a warhammer at its feet - is raised in the town below Storm's End, where Jon Connington now sits as Lord Paramount of the Stormlands. Elia knows it is meant less as an insult to Jon personally and more as an honour for House Baratheon, who ruled near three centuries and are missed for being less strict than House Connington.

Jon rages. Jon always rages, at Elia, because he blames her for Rhaegar's death. He rages a little less when the crowned stag falls, knocked accidentally by one of the wide balance beams of the wheelhouse bearing Aegon to Storm's End, where Lord Connington is to host a tourney and feast for Aegon's fifth nameday.

Elia winks to him, when someone mentions the crushed statue, and Jon goes terribly pale. His wife, at his side, is always pale, but looks worse even than usual now.

 **vi.**

Robert Baratheon, Ned Stark, Jon Arryn, Hoster Tully.

They were not bad man, Elia knows - Ned Stark less than any of them fought for ill, for gain, and yet it is his House that she must watch closest of all.

House Arryn is dead. House Baratheon erased. House Tully too close by to be a worry.

But House Stark? The bastard hides among the Starks. Blackfyre, Bittersteel, Bloodraven, Baratheon - bastards of House Targaryen have always wanted more than their due. She will not allow this one to overstep.

She is told that he is a happy boy, who loves his cousin, the child-lord of Winterfell. She hopes that they will be as happy as she and Oberyn were, so he does not wish to challenge Aegon.

 **vii.**

"My son is gravely ill," Lady Connington says, her ever-sickly face all pallor and rage. "I would visit him, at Winterfell, and have him brought with me to Storm's End when he recovers."

Elia wonders if it was this damning naivety that drew Rhaegar to the girl, now a woman, and pities her for it.

"You may visit your son," Elia says, ignoring the grit of Jon's teeth and focusing instead on the flush of hope on Lady Connington's corpse-white cheeks. "But he may not return with you. You must understand that such a thing is impossible, surely?"

 **viii.**

Oberyn's wife is sister to the Widow of Winterfell, plump and pretty and highly-strung, but devoted to Oberyn in a way that makes Elia forgive any ills she may otherwise see in Lysa's character. She is Lady Connington's inverse, in all things save the existence of her bastard daughter, and wonders just how different things might have been, in Rhaegar's world or in Robert Baratheon's.

"I should like to visit Winterfell with Lady Connington, if I may, Your Grace," Lysa says, her high voice lisping as it sometimes does when she is nervous. "It is only that I have not seen my sister in so long, and we were so close-"

"But of course, sister!" Elia enthuses, delighted by this _obvious_ turn of events, which she did not see. "Oh, Lysa, how could I deny such a thing to you? I know that I would have gone half mad for lack of my brothers, had we been apart so long as you and your sister!"

And of course, if _Lysa_ is to go to Winterfell, then _Oberyn_ will have to accompany her, and perhaps clever Nym can go with them, and their Ellaria, too, and they will be travelling in justified splendour, because of _course_ Rhaenys will wish to go - she and Oberyn's Nym are as thick as thieves, despite Nym being a little her elder, and Rhaenys so loves seeing new things that Elia cannot deny her this.

And where Rhaenys goes, the Kingslayer follows - so loyal to his little princess that his lordly father despairs openly.

The whole of the far-scattered North will bow to the show of strength that will be Rhaenys' first progress. Oberyn will allow no less, and will ensure that this is no triumphant homecoming for the last daughter of House Stark.

 **ix.**

"He is the plainest boy I have ever come across," Oberyn says, perplexed, upon his return. "There is nothing remarkable about him whatever, sister. I had expected some sort of marvel."

"You sound almost disappointed, brother," Elia teases, remembering clever, shining Aegon, with his golden skin and silver hair and eyes like black amethysts, so bright even as a boy of five or six.

The bastard is six years old now, and outshone at every turn by his trueborn cousin - this, Elia has heard from sources as biased one way as Lysa and as biased the other as Lady Connington, through her husband.

"She says that Lady Stark is not unkind to the boy," Jon says, "but that she shows favour to her own son - a natural thing, I would have thought."

Jon's son is a fine boy, tall for three with a tangle of bright red curls and a chubby smile that has Rhaenys thoroughly charmed. Elia wonders if Lady Connington will ever love her second son so well as she pines for her first.

"I think," Oberyn says, "that the Lady Connington thinks that her son ought to be elevated in Winterfell, for his Stark blood."

"Lord Stark's blood runs true," Elia says, shaking her head. "If you permit it, Lord Connington, I would have Lady Ashara speak with your wife - she may be better able to help Lady Connington understand the truth of the situation than any of us might."

Ashara has since wed and had another daughter, but her heart still lies in a marbled-over grave at the foot of the Palestone Tower at Starfall, Elia knows. She is their best chance of making Lady Lyanna see _sense,_ and gods be good but it is high time the girl thought of something other than her own blasted self.

 **x.**

There is a progress, when Aegon is five-and-ten.

Elia travels by wheelhouse, of course, and keeps the windows open so that she may laugh with Aegon and Rhaenys, as they ride alongside. Ashara rides with her, cradling her tiny Lenora to her breast, and Oberyn sometimes joins them, too, saying he is lonely for a lady's company with both his own stuck in the capital with all their children.

It is marvellous - the Reach, first, and then along the goldroad and the coastroad to the Westerlands, back through the Riverlands and turning north, to the place where Aegon _must_ be particularly honoured, if they are to quell the once-more rising rumours of rebellion.

The boy is only a year Aegon's junior, four-and-ten and with Rhaegar's height. He has the same long, melancholy face as his sullen mother, the same petulant set to his jaw, the same hungry eyes - his turned to his trueborn cousin, who is a handsome, gracious boy, a true credit to his mother, since remarried and made an Umber, where Lady Connington's turn most often to Aegon, who has all that her son might have claimed, had Gregor Clegane's work been done, and to Rhaenys, who burns as bright as the great red star that has filled the skies of light.

"Your Grace," the boy grumbles, when presented to her, head down and jaw tight with something she dares not name.

"Master Snow," she returns, light and airy as if she were greeting Cersei Lannister, turned Marbrand in the wake of the Rebellion. "Your mother was well, when last I saw her."

Lady Connington had been sent from court for her reaction to Elia's last decree before their departure - a decree banning Lady Connington from joining this progress, because what place had the King's father's mistress on such a journey? Daeron the Second surely never brought a Bracken sister or Missy Blackwood along when he had travelled, and Elia thought it best that of all kings, Aegon emulate Daeron the Good.

The bastard's face is red with fury, when he lifts his head, and Elia smiles. It is not gracious, she knows, not queenly, but some low part of her triumphs in the face of proof that Rhaegar's shame has been held down, in the shadows, where it belongs.


End file.
